Ebook Atonement and Personality

Atonement is a reality much too fundamental to human consciousness, to be capable of any ready explanation. Our explanations, at their best, are still always partial explanations. It is always more than our understanding of it.

From this there follow two direct results. The first is a certain duty of what has been called "reverent agnosticism." Our insight into the doctrine may be adequate. That it should be exhaustive is inconceivable. All explanations must be given with this reserve. They are not, and never can be, the whole truth. There is always more than human logic can express, or human imagination conceive. "Quod si aliquatenus quaestioni tuæ satisfacere potero, certum esse debebit, quia et sapientior me plenius hoc facere poterit; imo sciendum est, quidquid homo inde dicere vel scire possit, altiores tantæ rei adhuc latere rationes."

The second result is that human explanations, being all, of necessity, aspects which are less than complete, must from time to time vary and be re-adjusted. Atonement can, and must, become intelligible, to different stages of human intellect. It can, and must, express itself in the terms of thought of different generations, and to some extent different philosophies.